Catherine Denley

Catherine Denley is a successful English mezzo-soprano who has concentrated, in the earlier part of her career, on oratorio performance. She grew up in her home town and began to learn to thing there. She graduated from Trinity College of Music in London. After graduation, she obtained a full-time job in the BBC Singers, but soon found it possible to leave that group to pursue her full-time solo career. She is married to Miles Golding, a violinist. They live in Hertfordshire, England. She records for Hyperion Records where her credits reflect her emphasis in oratorio performance. In addition to three sets of Vivaldi sacred music on that label she has sung on a disc of American choral music, the Bruckner Requiem, and six Handel oratorios, Alexander Balus, Deborah, Joseph and His Brethren, Judas Maccabaeus, Messiah, and Ottone. However, she has also participated on that label's complete Schubert song series, appearing on four discs. Live performances include Bach's Christmas Oratorio (Salzburg and Innsbruck), St. Matthew Passion at the Barbican Centre in London and Canterbury Cathedral and B minor Mass with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Her many Handel performances include Jephta and Judas Maccabaeus with the RIAS in Berlin, Messiah at the Barbican and in Macau, La Resurrezione in Paris with Les Musiciens du Louvre, Solomon on Berlin radio, and Deborah at a Promenade Concert in London. She has sung Vivaldi's Gloria with the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. More recent works on her concert repertory include Mahler's Eight Symphony, which she sang at Wells Cathedral, Beethoven's Ninth under John Eliot Gardiner in Japan, Mahler's Ninth on Dublin TV with Owain Arwel Hughes conducting, Schumann's Scenes from Goethe's Faust with Franz Welser-Möst and the London Philharmonic Orchestra at Royal Festival Hall, Britten's Spring Symphony with Kent Nagano conducting the Hallé Orchestra, and Mozart's Requiem in London's Royal Festival Hall, Finland, and Spain. She has appeared on British Channel 4's "Maestro" series singing Vivaldi arias and appeared at the Festival of Flanders and the Edinburgh Festival. Despite the emphasis on oratorio performance, she has begun appearing in operas, mostly from the early performance repertory. These include Handel's Ezio at the Théâtre du Champs-Elysée in Paris and the part of Juno in the Hallé (Germany) Opernhaus in Handel's Semele. She has also performed in the U.S., Canada, Israel, China, the Czech Republic, and the Ukraine.